Personal Enrichment
by shellalana
Summary: Whiskey Foxtrot tries to teach himself to paint, and it's not going well; a surprise "intruder" helps him loosen up.


"Happy little trees, my ass."

The old clone had been watching the old tutorials for hours at this point, and nothing on his canvas looked remotely like what the poofy-haired man in the video had produced. His wrist was quick and delicate with his strokes, teasing at the body of the large mountain in the background until it took shape. He made it look _so fucking easy_ to the point that Whiskey was starting to doubt whether he was even going about it the right way. It would be too easy to blame his claws for making it difficult to hold the paintbrush properly, or that the paint was too old or not the right kind or the colours were just wrong-

 _Snap!_

Another paintbrush done in. Sighing, he tossed the broken and splintered piece of wood and harresburra fur into the small pile by his door and picked up another. At this rate, he was going to have to order some more if he wanted to get this stupid thing finished. Deep breath, exhale, refocus and start again.

How the hell did this guy stay so positive? ran through his mind as he scooped another dollop of paint onto his brush. He knew when he picked this up that it wouldn't be easy, but the point was to make something beautiful, something pleasing to the eye. Instead, it was looking like he'd dunked a chicken into some paint and thrown it at the canvas a couple of times.

He sneezed at the paint's scent that filled the room as he continued with his work. No... that green didn't seem right. Add some yellow, make it lively like the giant leaves on Ekkunar. Focusing on the image he wanted to make instead of following the man's instructions and exact brush strokes seemed to clear his mind and wipe away his frustrations. He could feel the warmth of the star's rays bathing his skin, hear the rustle of the large leaves in the wind, the smell of the dirt being kicked up by his stray bullets-

 _No. Happy place. Peaceful, remember?_

He loosened his hold on the brush and allowed the sensations and imagery to take him over again. He always did like the colour green and the pleasant way it felt across his tongue. He closed his eyes and allowed it to fill him, to pull on the strings of his wrist and fingers to create-

A knocking at his door shattered everything and he felt the warmth retreating back into the nothingness. His hand paused in fear of such emptiness... and in being discovered. He wasn't supposed to be here - a lie he'd told his boss so he could have personal time for this project - and his mind pored over the million lies and resolutions to the scenario before him. Hide with all his shit and wait until whoever was on the other side went away. But that would smear his paint and he was finally starting to enjoy what was developing.

He could answer the door and not give a fuck that he'd lied. Block the doorway so that they couldn't see whta he was up to.

Or not answer at all and risk them coming in anyway. But he'd locked it, no one would have a reason to-

The door opened with a hiss, and revealed the Valkyrie with something in her hands. She froze with an unexpected gift... was that a music book?

Reyna hadn't anticipated him being there, and had only knocked on his door out of habit to ensure that he was really gone. Without an answer, she'd let herself in to quickly slip her gift on a table and leave, an old thing she'd found at the local bookstore and figured it would be nice for him to find. She knew how closely he kept his moments of "personal enrichment" to his chest, preferring to play with no one else around. But maybe with the present, he could afford her just one song. She didn't care if his playing was perfect; she just wanted to hear it at least once.

So much for that surprise...

Both were frozen in place, their gazes locked, with no means of escape. It was Reyna who finally broke the tension with one of her grins as she caught sight of the canvas, and covered her eyes with her hand.

"I get it. You need me gone?"

Whiskey wasn't sure how to answer. She'd gone out of her way to get him that gift... plus she'd already seen what he'd been up to. Was there really any reason to chase her out now? His sigh ended in a low growl... which didn't really amount to a no in her book. So she made her way over to him, the book in her hand slipped onto his bed as she tried to get a look at his work over the curve of his shoulder.

"Not bad. Always wanted to try painting myself, but never got the time to learn."

"It's harder than it looks," he mumbled, as he picked up the brush and palette and went back to work. Small talk he could do, just as long as she wasn't trying to tell him _how_ to do it.

"I can imagine." She examined the harsh thick lines where he'd been trying to construct his forest: tall ruddy trees with no character to them, forcing his hand to make them too perfect instead of natural. But she soon took note of the smoother, softer lines of a few leaves. _There_ , he'd found something, _felt something_ , and he'd allowed it to dictate his hand rather than the other way around. That was where his secret lay.

"Come on, you need a break." Her hand hovered over the dancing end of his paintbrush, eager to pull it away so that they could talk. Coercing his brush to do the right thing would only make it worse.

He quickly pulled his hand away with an "I'm fine."

"No, you're tense, cuz I found out about your secret." She waited patiently until he dug more paint onto his brush before she made a grab, and chuckled proudly when she plucked it from his fingers. "You gotta learn to have fun with it."

"Great. _Good_. Gimme back my brush." Claw-tipped fingers unfurled towards her in a plea for the return of his tool.

"Nuh uh. Not until you lighten up." The paint-covered bristles found his helmet and left behind a green half-smile across the metal, the paint slowly starting to drip down and into the cracked crevices he'd never bothered to get fixed. It was almost comical... save for the light scowl that exposed his sharp teeth. To anyone but her, the expression would have been frightening, and he would have had his brush back. Instead, he was going to have to deal with her teasing.

Whatever helped him break out of his shell... and got her to stop wasting his paint.

"Commander," he said sternly.

"Whiskey Foxtrot," she replied with a half-smirk, her eyes searching for somewhere else on him to leave more paint.

"This isn't funny."

"Neither is you bring a grump." Reyna spun around him and straddled his lap with the brush still in hand, smearing the rest of the paint she had down the middle of his torso, the green bright against his bluish-purple skin. "So lighten up and paint me."

"I don't have another canvas-" he started to explain; a lie to get her to be quiet and leave him alone to his practice. This wasn't the first painting he'd tried to do, but he'd gotten rid of the evidence of all the rest so that no one else would find them.

No one even wondered why there was a bit more hot water than usual, with a little extra fuel in the furnaces...

"No, dummy. _Paint_. _Me_ ," she interrupted, the look in her eye saying something else entirely different. The next sound, one that was familiar to him, was her leather jacket hitting the floor, along with the shifting of metal and buckles. Knew every scar and curve that would stretch and twist with the removal of her white shirt. Was an expert at getting those tiny clasps undone on the undergarment that she wore with just a few twists of her fingers. And definitely loved the warm scent that came with her being pressed against him. Always this familiar dance between them, in what had started off as his need to learn how to appreciate the fine art of pleasure. More than just rutting, more than just using another body for some kind of release. It had become something else with time, a thing that neither of them would give a name to nor did he want to question her on. That kind of attachment... it never really suited either of them, no matter how much he wanted it to. She... he could never be sure about without asking her openly, and _that_ he could never do.

He swallowed hard as he took the brush from her waiting fingers, giving in to her command and smeared some green down her shoulder. The colour against her brown skin reminded him of the deep rich moss he'd find at the base of the tall trees, soft and plush. He wished he'd taken the time to feel their texture and commit it to memory. Maybe one day, he would. _Stop and smell the flowers_ , every fucker kept telling him.

Another blind dive into his palette brought some yellow and grey to the brush, and he smeared her clavicles with long strokes that swirled and looped towards her breasts. For some reason, he found himself staring, wondering what to add to them besides the obvious circles and accented colours to her nipples. Instead, he exchanged the brush for a fresh one, and gathered some white to add some flurries of white to her dark nipples and down the dipping curves of her breasts.

All the while she watch with an intrigued eye, a pleasant hum in her throat at the cool sensation of brush and paint against her naked flesh. She watched as the tension melted from his face and he became... _different_. Relaxed. Focused, but without the need to shoot lead and scrap metal into an enemy. Appreciative in some degree. Small slivers of himself poking through.

She craned her neck further to gaze down at herself and see what he was doing, idle hands massaging at his thighs in encouragement for more. The pressure inspired a swath of red paint next, over one breast and trailed down to the edge of her pants. Hungry, like an angry volcano waiting to erupt and spill out...

The undoing of metal teeth followed as he toyed and pulled on the zipper of her pants, and shifted the denim low enough to expose the tops of her thighs. There, he painted swirls of turquoise and yellow, with strokes of orange to break their monotony. Reyna tried so hard not to laugh at the tickle of the brush, her chuckles smothered behind a bitten lip.

Cute, he thought, before he teased the brush along the light hairs around her navel that disappeared below the edges of her underwear. Orange paint stained the pastel green fabric, bled into it in harsh circles until the colours could no longer be differentiated. Melted into a something in-between, neither orange nor green.

"I think you're getting it," she purred, spying his obvious reaction to it all between his legs, his seat taut with the pressure of his loins. It was easy to rouse him, even easier to get him started, but keeping him inspired? That was where the real fun was. "Sure you don't want that break?"

He answered her tease with a toss of his brush and hands hooking themselves beneath her knees. He stood with her easily, her weight little to nothing in his arms as he trailed hot tongue across her skin, swirling the colours together. It was making a mess of all his hard work, ruining the attention he'd given to every dip she'd laid out before him. He should have been upset, but there would always be more skin in the future, more paint he could buy. Another way to steal her attention away from her daily duties and have her for himself.

A few steps had her sandwiched between him and the wall, granting his hands some relief so that he could work her pants down the rest of the way. She made the task even easier with the grip of her knees against his sides, and shimmied her hips in time with his tugs. He always had difficulty working them past those thighs of hers without ripping the fabric altogether - the one good pair she had left, she'd warned him - but it was those few seconds of waiting that made the act all the more rewarding.

He was slow during their removal, a chanced glance revealing that she was enjoying this, but there was an eagerness in her eyes that wanted him to get to the task instead of all this idle foreplay. Foreplay that allowed him to treasure the sight presented to him before it became a messy, tangled blur of heat and smells.

He regained his grip on her hips, claws digging in against her tanned flesh, and shifted her weight onto his shoulders, the garment still dangling from her ankle. She squealed with surprise, but maintained her balance with a grip to one of his helmet spikes. _That sound_... she was having fun with this instead of her usual need to escape her troubles outside of his door. It was always music to his ears.

Her scent was potent and already colliding with his senses, mixed with the faint smell of paint. Like a gentle noose of silk around his neck, dragging him closer until he drowned in it. Until he would want nothing else. His tongue teased at her folds, parted them with expert ease until he felt her tighten and squirm around it. Thighs tensed against the sides of his helmet, chest heaved and head thrown back with a languid sigh. _Perfect_. The release of her control, her need to let someone else take the reins for once in her life. It was what made their relationship... almost perfect.

Pink flickered in his mind's eye at the taste of her: cheerful, bouncy, bordering on romantic. It made his heart warm, his toes curl... he removed one hand long enough to undo his own belt, and paid no mind to it all clattering to the floor. One swift motion of his ankle had it sliding across the room and colliding with-

 _Didn't care._

It wasn't long before he would feel her writhing in anticipation of that approaching high, but he wouldn't give her the satisfaction. His grip removed, her back slid down the wall until she was almost folded in half, the pressure shifted to her ankles to prevent herself from hitting the ground ass-first.  
"What the hell, Whiskey?!" she chastised breathlessly, her hands searching for the means to keep herself from sliding further.

"Thought you liked being taken by surprise." He stared down at her with a toothy grin, his claws tracing the curves of her ass and leaving their marks in their wake.

"Not like-" Reyna didn't get to finish, her words choked off with a groan of pleasure as his erection parted her for him. She struggled to find a hold on something, anything, but found herself lost in the fog of her lust as his hips found their rhythm.

The pink darkened into a rich magenta, and sparkled with flecks of gold as he felt her growing more moist around his erection, as she keened and arched and worked her teeth against a knuckle until it was red and raw. Breasts shook in time to his beat, dark nipples erect and joined by goose flesh. She fought to make her knees cooperate and work with him, to further deepen the sensation of his thrusts, all to no avail. Defenceless, powerless in such a position, she had no authority over him, no demands to make... not that she could conjure any in her present state of mind.

 _All his_. And that thought inspired a coursing river of electricity down his spine. This wasn't the harsh, bruising sex, the kind she was used to. No, _this was art_.

 _That flush to her cheeks_

 _The reddening bruise of her lips_

 _The dips and curves of her exposed neck_

 _The notes of ecstacy that spilled out of her throat like silver light across a red sky_

Warmth spread from his gut and down his thighs in a way he'd never felt before, and he had to reinforce his stance to stop his knees from giving out. This was different. New. Enticing. Seductive.

Reyna could feel it too; the lack of biting, the low growling, and his slowed pace told her he was finding something else in this encounter. She found no reason to ruin the moment with her usual dirty talk, and settled on a fixed gaze instead. That must have taken him by surprise as she saw his gut clench, and he grunted with a wide-eyed stare.

She couldn't help the smirk on her parted lips as she devoured that look of his. An even exchange of surprises, in her book.

 _Paint me_ , her words repeated in his ears.

Another jolt of heated pleasure nailed itself under his navel. She saw _that_ too, and knew that was a sign of the beginning of the end. One tiny undone thread for her to tease and tug on, until he was unmade.

"Tell me," she whispered between breaths, a small pool of sweat gathering in her blushing clavicles. A vague enough invitation for him to fill in the blank with whatever desire he needed at the moment. She watched him struggle with it too, not wanting to give her the satisfaction and have this all end before he had the chance to fully appreciate the experience.

"Say it."

His teeth against his lip kept him quiet, long after she came around him minutes later, long after he removed his twitching member from her, long after cool metal found her fevered forehead and fogged up, condensation forming soon after. Even after it dripped across her chest, his arms saving her from the plight of her position, and carrying her tired form to bed. Even after he fetched her a beer and watched her slip away into unconsciousness, the bottle half-empty. It didn't matter that most of the paint was gone, some of it now smeared on his sheets and his person. Something within him had... unknotted itself.

 _Her chest heaved for air, like the silent breathing of the seasons_

 _Sweat along her hairline akin to the morning dew on the leaves_

 _Waves of heat rose from her body and washed his skin, just like the star_

He dug out another canvas from under his bed, and readied a new palette of paint.


End file.
